


I'll Carry You With Me

by qwanderer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Grief, Post-Series, Warning: Parker is for reals dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 12:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9727745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: Parker falls.(For Amanda)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, so, my friend and second cousin Richard just lost his very special Amanda-wife suddenly and unexpectedly, and the funeral was today. She will be missed. So. Here. Have some very special angst.

The mark came back into his office unexpectedly, would have caught Parker there if she hadn't made it out of the window. 

The sixth-floor window. 

"Parker!" 

"You okay, Park?" 

"It's no problem, guys," she said. "I could do this in my sleep. I just need to get over to the..." 

Through the comms, Parker's voice faltered. There was the sound of skin scraping against concrete. Then nothing. 

"Parker! Parker! Damn it, Parker!" 

Then... impact. 

* * *

Parker got restless, sometimes. 

She could hide for hours in the air vents, motionless and not making a sound, if she had to. But she preferred to be moving. 

She preferred to be flying. 

When she'd torn her ACL, she was still up and about on the regular, hopping along on her crutches and doing crime against worse crime. She wasn't built for bed rest. She had to be out there, doing things, or she'd go crazier than she already was. 

No matter what else was going on with her. 

She'd been off, just a bit, this past week, a headache or two, feeling dizzy when she stood up too fast, and it annoyed her immensely. 

She didn't try to hide it, like Eliot sometimes did - she yelled and spat at her body when it refused to cooperate. Like she did when she had cramps. A groan and a glare down at her belly. Only this time she went cross-eyed trying to glare at her own forehead. 

"Are you sure you're up for this?" Hardison asked her as they planned this latest job. 

"Yeah, I'm fine," Parker said. "Anyway, there's not really a way around this." 

They could always refuse a job, if they weren't up for it, but this was different. Some of the guys from the Black Book knew a reckoning was coming, like it had come for so many others over the past months, and they wanted to strike first, take out those responsible. The three of them. The team. 

"We could find a way," Hardison argued. "We could run. Lay low, like Nate and Sophie have been." 

Parker scowled. Her expressions were so similar to Eliot's, when she was in pain. Hardison wondered how often Eliot was like that because he was in pain. 

"I can do it, okay?" she insisted. "I can do this job. I'm the mastermind and I say we go." 

Hardison wished he'd argued harder. Wished he'd pointed out how when Nate was the mastermind, he'd nearly killed himself a number of times. How he'd gotten himself shot. 

"It was her choice," Eliot kept reminding him, kept reminding himself, probably, as well. "Respect that. Don't blame yourself." 

Eliot understood that in a way Hardison probably never would. Eliot 'til-my-dying-day Spencer would want it understood that if he ever sacrificed himself for the job, for the team, that the responsibility for that decision was his and his alone. 

Hardison just wanted to keep everyone safe. 

And he'd failed at that. 

* * *

Hardison couldn't stand to be in the brew pub, not now. So he told the staff he was taking a few days off, maybe a week, maybe more. Amy, tear-streaked, promised him she'd hold down the fort. 

His usual apartment was over the place, of course. He didn't even think he could stand to walk through every day. So he camped at Eliot's, installing himself on the couch. 

There were memories here, too, but not as many, and there was an Eliot, to make him stop staring at the blinking cursor in his open terminal window and eat, or go to sleep. 

But then, sometimes, Hardison would get up to answer the call of nature and look out the window to see Eliot, standing in his backyard garden, staring at an empty square of earth. 

Probably, it was a good thing that neither of them was quite alone, right now. 

Three days in, it rained, thunder and lightning, water pouring down so hard that Eliot fretted about his herbs, and Hardison about the surveillance cameras, about the power and cable internet going out. 

In the absence of anything else compelling to do, to think about, they both wandered out onto the front porch to watch the lightning, listen to the thunder, watch the water pound down. 

There was a sound from under the porch. A high, weak animal sound. 

And another. A meow. 

The boys looked at each other. 

"Well, I ain't going out in that rain to rescue some stray cat," Hardison said. 

Eliot scowled, then sighed. Stepped out into the downpour. 

She was a tabby, soaking wet, no tags. No visible injuries, but she was scrawny as all get-out, and seemed to be exhausted. Eliot brought her inside, got her warm and dry. And Hardison had to admit that, once she was properly fluffy again, she was pretty cute. 

"So what do we call her?" Hardison asked. 

"Don't name it," Eliot warned. "If you name it, you get attached." 

* * *

Once she'd slept off the cold of the storm, she was a slippery little thing. She found the tightest little corners of the house and stayed there. 

"She should get to the vet," Eliot said, "but now that she's up and about again, damned if I know how to get ahold of her." 

"Guess she's gonna be staying for a while," Hardison said with the shadow of a smile. "I'm'a order some cat stuff, get it couriered here." 

"You better tip the guy this time," Eliot replied, looking out at the rain that continued to fall heavily. "Or so help me, Hardison..." 

"Okay, okay," Hardison raised his hands in surrender. "Triple hazard pay. I promise." 

Today, there was absolutely no joy in the prospect of needling Eliot with his fake tipping habits. 

* * *

They gave her a night, to get used to the place. 

She wouldn't come out, not for anything, not to eat the food they'd got her. Barely to drink and use the litter, and only when they weren't hovering around to catch a glimpse of her. 

"This is the good stuff," Hardison promised the cat. "Best canned meat product the pet section has to offer." 

"Really? The good stuff?" Eliot sniffed the food, then held it out in Alec's direction. "Would you wanna eat that?" 

Hardison sniffed obediently. "Eh, I've had worse-smelling frozen dinners," he said. 

Eliot looked at him balefully. "Just go ask the google what cats can and can't eat," he said, walking into the kitchen with intent. 

"You know, it's sad, I can't even tell if you're messing with me," Hardison threw back, fishing a tablet out of his bag. "The google." 

Eliot looked into the fridge. "Damn it, Hardison," he said, "why is my refrigerator full of leftover takeout? You've only been here three days." He started picking up boxes and throwing them out. 

"You haven't really been cooking, and you know I can't," Hardison answered as he scrolled through his search results. He wasn't about to mention how they'd been getting halfway through a meal and they'd find themselves looking up to the ceiling, wondering when Parker was gonna come down and join them, and then they suddenly couldn't stomach any more. "Okay, pretty much any lean meat that's not salted or smoked is good, but shellfish and... ugh... apparently chicken hearts? Are good to add in because taurine. Lots of veggies are okay, almost everything you grow, I think, but not onions, garlic, tomatoes or mushrooms, and a lot of adult cats are lactose intolerant - no such thing as a pizza cat, I guess - and no avocadoes." 

"What the hell is a pizza cat?" 

"Like I said, not a thing that exists. Pizza _dogs_ , though, they're comic book heroes." 

Eliot shook his head, not bothering to reply, and instead muttering about how to cook a scallop without garlic or cream sauce and make it tasty. 

It took a few tries before Eliot got something that the cat would actually eat, but it worked. And in the meantime, Eliot was cooking again. 

Soon, there was catnip growing in the empty plot. 

Meantime, Hardison was patient with the cat, just being around in stillness and silence, poking around on the 'net while keeping an eye out for pale orange tabby fur. She didn't like them coming after her, coming close to her, but she liked to watch Hardison where he sat on the sofa, liked to venture out and explore when Eliot was out in his garden and the house was still. 

The first time she curled up on the other end of the couch to sleep, Hardison wanted to do a little dance. But he didn't, because that would have scared her away. 

The first time she let him pet her, just a hand smoothed down the fur on her back, Hardison felt a warm glow in his chest where he thought he might never feel anything again. 

Soon she was everywhere in the house, taking a particular liking to the exposed beams that Parker had enjoyed so much about the place, how if you hopped the balcony railing they were just there, waiting, like a balance beam. The cat didn't even have to hop, she could just slip right through. 

She'd get up on the counter while Eliot was making food, peering curiously at it and batting at anything that moved. She seemed to especially like celery ends. 

Then one day, Hardison was doing some important coding on his security protocols, and he felt a gentle swish-swish down his cheek, back and forth, just a feather-light brush across his chin. 

"Damn it P-" 

He looked to the side, finding no thief all in black wielding a feather, but instead a tabby tail. 

It hurt, but he couldn't find it in his heart to blame the cat, or to wish the reminder away. 

"Damn it Piper," he told her. "Trying to focus here." Although that was a lost cause now. He suddenly found the screen blurring, swimming in front of his eyes. 

Eliot came in from the kitchen, sat down beside him, rubbed a hand across his shoulders. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. 

"It just - it feels like she's so close, you know? Just, just up in the rafters or in the other room. Just, the way she always was, here, but not always here. Always close." He sniffed, rubbing his eyes. "And the cat - Piper - she keeps being here, keeps reminding me of her. Of Parker. Of how she was. How she was always close, always watching. And I think - she's still here. She's still here, in every way that matters." 

"Yeah," Eliot agreed. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I take it we're keepin' the cat?" 

Hardison laughed. "Hell, yeah," he said. "She's ours now." 

"Yeah, okay." 

* * *

Them and the cat, they kept each other sane until Nate and Sophie could get back, until they could start figuring out a new shape for their little family of thieves. 

Eventually, they went back to work in the brew pub. Got a handle on the Black Book situation. Maybe, in time, they'd start taking outside jobs again. 

Only one thing was sure. They'd always carry Parker with them, now, every step they took. 


End file.
